The students had a great time celebrating Halloween in school last Friday. They went to the Boo Bash in the morning and did lots of fun crafts and played fun games. Thank you so much to the parent volunteers who helped it go so smoothly. The parade was a hit in the afternoon as well. I barely recognized some of the students in their costumes!

Last week, we got a chance to go on the laptops for the first time this year! The students were very excited and did a great job logging in with their credentials. I even gave them a chance to play some games on the laptops because I was so impressed with their patience on the first day of using laptops.

Next week is a short week of school! Please remember that there is no school on Tuesday November 3rd, Thursday November 5th, and Friday November 6th.

Here's what we were working on in the classroom :

Reading : We learned a couple new print strategies last week. These are strategies that help readers decode tricky words. We learned about 'Lips the Fish,' who gets her mouth ready to read a tricky word by saying the first sound. Sometimes, the whole word ends up popping out! We also learned about 'Stretchy Snake,' who goes sound-by-sound through a tricky word to try and sound it out. This is the strategy most adults are familiar with using.

Writing : We launched a new writing unit last week, which is focused on writing 'small moment' stories. These are personal narratives (or true stories about things that have happened in students' lives) that are focused on small moments in time. For example, rather than writing a story all about a trip to Disney World, the student would narrow the focus of his/her story and write about the time he/she went on Splash Mountain and got soaked. Narrowing the focus of the students' stories allows for us to work on using descriptive language and adding details.

Math : We finished up the end of unit 2 by learning about using number models to represent number stories and how to solve for the unknown. This week, we'll start unit 3, which is heavily focused on addition and subtraction.

Phonics : We went over the r and w sounds last week. The students also developed their understandings of short vowels and consonants by reading nonsense words.